New Delhi: President Donald Trump is likely to pick Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as its next head, Reuters reported quoting an unnamed source, even as leading global financial magazine Barron’s named Raghuram Rajan as the "ideal choice".
The term of the current head of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, is set to expire early next year.
A White House official told Reuters that US President Donald Trump will name her successor on Thursday. Trump is reported considering four potential candidates.
Meanwhile, Barron’s magazine, in an article, asked, "If sports teams can recruit the best talent from around the globe, why not central banks?" while pitching for Rajan as the next head of the Federal Reserve.
The article regretted that "nowhere on the short list of potential candidates to lead the Federal Reserve is the current star among the world's central bankers -- someone who oversaw a sharp drop in inflation, the stabilisation of a currency, and a 50 per cent jump in stock prices".
"Perhaps more important, his was a lonely but prescient voice warning of a financial crisis resulting from excessive risk-taking in credit derivatives, years before it hit," it added.
It went on list precedents of central banks to be headed by non-citizens, such as Canada-born Mark Carney at the Bank of England. It said that nobody was pitching for Rajan despite the fact that he had been tipped for a Nobel prize for Economics, which ultimately went to economist Richard Thaler.
Rajan shot to big fame three years after he predicted a financial crisis at an annual gathering of economists and bankers in the US in 2005. Initially ridiculed, he was hailed as a visionary when the crash came in 2008.
He was the first non-western and the youngest to become the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund when he got the job at 40.
He was appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of India by the then Congress-led UPA government in 2013. He was not offered an extension by the current BJP-led NDA regime. He is currently the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago.
(With Agency inputs)
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